I’m building a nest

Yes, that’s right, a nest. A great big giant empty nest.

It’s an installation piece that is placed out on the foreshore while the tide is at its lowest point and then removed when the tide is coming back in.

When I heard about it, I started thinking about the way the tide goes out and everything is laid bare. It’s like the soul of the ocean is exposed, raw, naked somehow. One of my favourite places to go is nudgee beach at low tide amongst the muddy mangroves. It’s an incredibly healing place for me. The smell, the feel, the connection,  it’s like the earth in its deepest form is open to me. What I particularly like about any place when the tide is out, is the intimacy I feel,  the connection,  the feeling that I’m seeing something uncovered.  Literally,  I am, of course, but it’s more. There is something so profoundly emotional about water, that when the tide is out you see the bones of  the world.

So, I started thinking about that, what’s  left when the tide goes out. If we strip away the emotional coverings, what do we see?

I began to think of nests, safe places, what they are covered with, what makes them safe,  what’s left if we take the emotional covering off?

And this is where I begin. I started by adding to my already rather large collection of bones and skulls and such.